Thereâs this thing I see a lot of today where people, especially larger blogs*, respond to something they donât like not by blocking, deleting an ask, ignoring an ask, or even, if they have the spoons and patience, addressing the point of difference with understanding, but by making fun of it.
*I know tumblr doesnât have a public follower count but you can absolutely tell which blogs are larger than others from the simple practice of asking âDoes this username crop up on my dash on a regular basis from multiple sources?â It is uncannily reliable.
Some of this is just the modern, twitter-quippy style way of online media - twitter and tiktok reduce down the point of contact and allow people to make completely spurious, bad-faith arguments based on nonsense because theyâre looking at a very narrow snapshot of whatâs going on and forget to consider the whole of it and also that thereâs a person on the other end of it.
Some of it is that some people are goddamn bullies, and like the thrill of responding, of dismissing others - especially people they can deem âhatersâ or âidiotsâ (regardless of the actual truth of that statement). There are people who want to feel superior and they gain that feeling by putting down others.
And some of it... well it comes back to that point about it often coming from larger blogs, because Iâve seen some blogs, starting out with a reasonable number of followers and then growing drastically, get worse in this specific way.
Because when you get more followers, you get an echo chamber. You see this more obviously on facebook, twitter, youtube, where the numbers are public, but itâs still true here. Blogs are followed by people who like a specific part of a blogâs output. They support that output and encourage it. When people come along and are - well, perhaps theyâre haters, or perhaps they misunderstood something, or perhaps theyâre legitimately ignorant because they never knew about it before - but they say something the blog doesnât like.
The first few times, early on, before they blow up, these bloggers can -and indeed often do - respond with patience and kindness. It gets them a reputation - theyâre nice, and thoughtful, and consider things, and it draws more people to them. It gives them a kind of social badge of âno, this oneâs okay. this blogâs a Good Personâ. Sometimes they might even wade in when replies from their followers get aggressive to try to defuse things - but you canât do that forever, no one has the spoons, especially as their follower count rises. They might make a couple posts asking people not to be rude, they might disable replies - the good ones delete asks they canât be bothered to deal with, block posts and people and phrases and move on with their lives - but some donât
Instead with some blogs, at some nebulous point as their follower count rises itâs like a switch flips.
And they start being flippant. They start responding with quips or jokes. They start responding not with patience but in bad faith, with rudeness, even with insults. Iâve seen someone send a follow-up ask to one such blog clarifying their POV, their ignorance, that the jokes made were legitimately hurtful to them - and the blog and the followers just doubled down on their behaviour.
This is not helped by the followers - who usually make these kind of jokes as well, often before the blog does. It normalises it to the blogger, seeing all of these things in their activity feed, and it also means that when the blogger starts acting that way, few of their vocal followers will condemn them for it - thereâs a kind of tacit support of this path. Even when challenged, once the flip is switched, few change back.
No one wants to think that perhaps theyâre a bad person. No one wants to think that perhaps what they said was rude and uncalled for. That they didnât have to respond to that ask, or that perhaps they could have explained why they made those jokes that could seem rude - especially when they get outside of their immediate circle which is ever more likely when you have a certain number of followers. They donât want to consider that, or their effect - so they double down. Itâs made worse. In many ways, itâs basically this meme:
[Image ID: The Simpsons Meme of Principle Skinner. The first panel has Skinner with his hand on his chin asking âAm I out of touch?â. In the second panel heâs straightened, staring ahead. The caption is âNo, itâs the children who are wrongâ.]
Except that in a terrible way, theyâre not out of touch. Theyâre out of touch with what they originally presented - kindness, decency, being a Good Person - but theyâre perfectly in touch with their vocal followers who donât want to think about the feelings of others and the consequences of their actions, who want to joke and quip and even bully complete strangers without ever considering if they are actually doing the right thing, the good thing, the empathetic or educational thing.
And not everyone has the spoons to explain things! But when thatâs the case - you can block a person. You can delete an ask. You can choose not reblog a post only to clown on it and then drag it up a week or so later to clown on it some more.
Iâve seen people like this tell others to curate their experiences, tell my friends and myself that we wouldnât be so annoyed at things if we just curated our feeds, and often getting quite mad about what theyâve assumed about us - but the thing is, theyâre not curating their experience. Theyâre responding to things in a way that, specifically, they have learned will get them a response and support from their followers. Theyâre doing it because it perpetuates the conflict algorithm that nets them followers and so increases the echo-chamber of their support - and further cements that flipped switch into place.
There are some bigger bloggers who donât appear to have gone this path. Who do seem to think about things and consider and donât unnecessarily reblog posts to clown on a smaller blogger, or respond an ask only to be mean and nasty rather than just deleting the ask and moving on with their life. But itâs few. Itâs concerningly few.
I find it kind of depressing. There are blogs I legitimately enjoyed before I saw them go this path. There are blogs Iâve witnessed steamroll people, or deliberately bring back a post that had moved out of common circulation specifically to clown on the (reliably a smaller blog) OP.
Itâs mean spirited. Itâs unnecessary. Itâs the kind of behaviour that when itâs twitter dogpiling I see some swaths of tumblr look down on as though somehow weâre better.
And yet, for some reason, when it happens on here, itâs suddenly okay.
